skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The question is not "What's wrong with this?" The proper question is "How can I make this better?" He's adopted a negative mindset by choice, whether he realizes it or not. That's not even what really grinds my gears about this post.

The really bad part of this post is the implication that this mentality (whether one takes the author's negative point of view, or my slightly more positive interpretation) is endemic to software development. It's not. Asking the question, "How can I make this better," ought to be a fundamental part of one's daily routine. Had the author adopted this mentality in general, he might have noticed a flaw in his workflow:

1. Write some code

2. Run the code

3. Get an error message

4. Find the error and back to step 1

There are some critical steps missing. A more appropriate approach would be:

0. Think about what I'm building

1. Write some code

2. Run (Test) the code

3. Get an error (of some sort)

3.5 Think about what might have gone wrong and verify it

4. Go to step zero.

That's right, when you find an error there are two distinct thought processes involved. First you think about what might have gone wrong. This would be the forming a hypothesis step of the scientific method (I've lumped testing into step 3.5 so as not to stray too far from the author's initial workflow, but suffice it to say that testing should be a recursive call to this entire process). Once you've discovered the source of the error, it's time to consider how best to fix it. Yes, more thinking. Only then should one go back to writing production code.

Sadly, I don't think the author's method is that rare. I had a professor who referred to the write/run/test/fix method as the original genetic programming. I think that's a fair statement. The problem with this method is that one ends up with a system that may work, but with no deep understanding of why it works. Absent that understanding, it will be more difficult to improve (fix) the system.

God help the next poor soul (aka the author in six months) to work on the system. Therein lies the negative feedback loop.
Nice writeup. We've been using Streak to manage our sales process and we're pretty happy with it - by putting the CRM in email (rather than the other way 'round) it is much, much closer to the "natural" way we work.

I'm consistently surprised that Google App Engine doesn't get more pickup among the HN community. No, it's not perfect, but it lets you build and scale a system with almost zero attention to ops. Lockin? Most startups fail because they never achieve product/market fit, not because they are unhappy with their hosting provider. Less ops means more time making features.
While tempting to do it all yourself, that doesn't scale.

Of course Kubrick didn't do it all himself. He deliberately picked things that he wanted extremely fine-grained control over and delegated other things to trusted experts. His brilliance, at least part of it, was knowing what he could delegate and what he couldn't.
I loved the McKean artwork after I've read the Magic of Reality, from Richard Dawkins. Amazing illustrations.
LifeTopix App Named in Top 100 in GMIC SV appAttack 100
Crisis Mode: HTC’s Rise, Fall and Hard Road Ahead
The post's entire argument is phrased in terms of a value judgement. There is no way to react to it without presenting an alternative value system.
Well, I laughed.

http://i.imgur.com/L5g0x.png
It looks just like it. If GitHub were Apple, they would be preparing a lawsuit over trade dress claims right about now...
A CSS Only Rotating Menu
Why the closed distribution model of Windows 8 must be changed
No, that's actually not true.

For one thing, US - New York - Silicon Valley has basically none of the social-democratic benefits of living in Europe.

For another thing, America really does make it dirt easy to register some kind of small business with a state or municipal government as existing and doing business in... something. This doesn't mean doing it right is easy, but doing it at all is very easy, and it's also correspondingly easy to go back and reregister your business when someone experienced tells you what to actually do.
I haven't seen it mentioned here but Tower for Mac OS has been a great tool for those who are not too familiar with git or it's associated commands. I've recommended it to at least a few hundred clients many of which use it religiously today.
bummer that 5.1 is mandatory :(
Opera offered a built-in web server in the application for quite some time called Unite. You were able to build apps and serve them up to yourself or friends remotely through your browser.

They just recently removed the feature from the version 12 builds. I think that it was an interesting concept but it never caught hold.
Why do you have the same design as: http://twitcherhq.com
> How long would it take for one of the servers to see every piece of the password, on average?

Strong secret sharing schemes are secure against this kind of attack. The schemes are designed so that you cannot infer any information about the original secret from any of the pieces. That holds even if you get a single piece from each of multiple independent "splits" of the same secret.

Some examples of such schemes are on Wikipedia and they fall into the "simple but clever" category: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing#Trivial_secret_s...
OP here. Thanks for all the great comments. Especially all of the negative ones, validating my thesis ;)
There is No Work/Life Balance
Since BitBucket is run by Atlassian, whose primary business (as far as I know) is enterprise software, I would guess (again without knowing) that they're in a pretty good position.

They're well known for their wiki, Confluence, and their ticket/issue/task tracker, JIRA. Source control is a natural extension of those tools, which I'd guess have had some effort put into making sure they work well together.

Looks like Stash is what they sell to enterprises, versus BitBucket which is hosted. Anyone know if these are completely separate products, or if they share a common codebase?

I've found SourceTree to be a great GUI tool for working on Git/Mercurial repos.

All of which is to say, good on them. I'm glad to see two very respectable players in this space.
It seems to be intentional. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjEgTuCFLU4&t=0m37s (if it's the same hole as in that video, I'm so bad with moving objects in my head to different angles)

(Edit, fixed a typo)
"The best"? Some directors use those kinds of methods to manipulate their actor's psychology. I don't understand why you think that's a mark of a better director though, and not just one technique among many. Some consider Kiarostami for instance one of "the best" and he gives only the minimal information needed to his actors for the scene and lets them do their thing. He does cast for the performance he wants though - not sure what director doesn't?
There is a C source code in github, https://github.com/singpolyma/mnemonicode. I haven't tested it though to see if it's working.
I really like Stripe. They're working hard to make payments work as well as GitHub does for source control, and this is yet another really useful tool. They're not perfect--we still encounter bugs occasionally--but they're responsive and friendly. Goes a long way.
Regurgitating the "be innovative" line is just as cliche and overdone as building a todo list. No one has to be innovative to do a startup. It's just stupid dogma that people repeat to make themselves feel important, special, and unique. Being hostile when people show off their work makes people not want to share their work anymore. You don't have to blow sunshine up people's asses when you don't like something but you should be constructive nonetheless.
How to Learn All the Things
Yea I got over that. Shit happens. Don't sweat the small stuff, yada yada yada. Besides when you fix it everyone lights up. It's the closest thing I've seen to a performer doing some amazing stunt with me being the amazing person. Focus on that, and not so much on that it broke. The difference between developers and non-devs is we can fix it, and that's really cool power. This article is almost like Wolverine complaining about his super powers being lame and always having to save the day. YOU'RE WOLVERINE STFU!

I think after being a programmer I have changed my outlook for the better because I realize what's possible instead of being trapped by other people's ideas/mistakes. I see how things are connected and if I changed this or that how it changes our limitations. Anyone can say "What if" very few can "Here's how." And that is really empowering and liberating.

I suppose when I was younger I was negative I wanted everything to be perfect like it couldn't be, but as I matured I see bugs, missing features, bad design as just opportunities and not the end of the world. Being late, bugs, complaining users, whatever it just doesn't bother me.

I'm not tuning them out just choosing to listen to what's really important and cutting through the bull because I expect all of it to happen. We're late ok I'll work a little more realizing I can really only make it about 10% faster, there bugs give me a reproducible test case and I'll fix it, users bitching reach out to them personally and find out what's the real problem.

And just like anything else in life, whether it's programming, football, music, or ditch digging, your attitude is your choice. The difference came when I chose to be positive...and laugh a lot more at all of the irony, bad choices we make, and gotchas that always creep up. Laughing really helps.
Really useful: That also works in a bookmarklet!
It also comes down to being right about it. It's often much easier to write something off ("that won't work"), than to accurately assess the reasons why it may not work, and possibly be part of modifying it so that it will. That difference is also subtle (just as subtle as the presentation in many cases), but also very important.
Just started using Confluence. If you're willing to use their hosted version, it's one of the best project management softwares I've used.

I would gladly use more products by them
Surprising your customers
Why do you disable javascript out of curiosity?
Could be a strategy to help people pull the trigger on a sale. When you do not recognize any writers in the bundle besides Gaiman, you can think "At least I get one book from someone I know to be talented." Then the indie writers you wish to receive money also end up with more for being grouped with a superstar "non-indie".
Announcing The New dishNET Internet
Thanks, Nat. :)
Neil Gaimen was likely included to drive people to the bundle. You get a work that you know will be good (if you like Neil) and a bunch of works that are possibly risky to you. Plus, think of the valuable marketing you get from Neil blogging/tweeting/etc about it.
I was addressing what the parent comment (from peeters) insightfully observed about the original article's four-step workflow description: getting to the next bug and fixing it could either be thought of negatively ("damn, I have another bug in my code") or positively ("I've solved this problem and made some forward progress"). Whether you find this negative or positive is a function of your mental state.

This is analogous to the mason's iterative workflow: noticing that his stone doesn't yet fit quite right and chipping a bit more off the side until it fits perfectly.

During development, most of our daily feedback comes from the code itself, not from people yelling at us about how broken it is (although that does happen sometimes).
Ultimately I think this can only be solved with an out of band security state indicator. Otherwise you can never quite believe what you see onscreen. Plenty of smartphones already have LEDs. Most keyboards don't use the scroll-lock led.
The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West are Going Out
Well done Stripe! Love the creativity and dedication towards simplifying every possible approach to payment processing.
I'll do what I do now, cook/prepare as much of what I eat as possible, bought from markets where possible. I don't care about organic or not, I care about needless additives and lost nutrients because it was prepared a week ago in a factory.
I don't know how specious the analogy is as regards coding, but it's a spot-on observation as regards film. Most film directors are severely lacking in technical skill, and if they went ot film school they did enough manual work to fulfil the requirements and then pursued assistant director jobs. In other words, they went down a management path. The most common secondary skills for directors are screenwriting or producing, but it's a rare enough thing to see on commercial films because few directors are sufficiently skilled to do both things well. Now management and having a vision are important, because you need someone to be the decision-maker. However, if the person isn't skilled in technical matters or willing to put trust in people in who are, you get a director who constantly fights with and/or bullies the rest of the crew, and people like that are a fucking nightmare to work with.

Here on HN there are lots and lots of people with the DIY ethic, who make it their business to understand the development of the product and help out as they can. But realistically, there's also a lot of people in the software business, with a small idea, a middling amount of money, and a ton of attitude, and they are not very fun to work for, plus they tend to pay themselves grandiose amounts compared to the rest of staff.
Outstanding.

However, one tiny nitpick:
The Stripe brand is not equivalent to paypal and other common payment options, it doesn't yet mean anything to most people. The button saying "Pay with Stripe" might confuse people or not convert optimally, perhaps let the text be customized?
In reverse order:

* Why in the OS? I didn't say "belong", just "likelier". That is because plugins are native code compiled by OS-dependent toolchains, and OS vendors are few (three that matter) and lock up native code these days via SDK licenses, app store rules, and even kernel-level restrictions.

In contrast, there are four or five competitive browsers, only one of which has Pepper and the rest do not -- and will not.

* I do not know how much better PNaCl can get. The shallow argument here is your assertion that "you know it'll get better". The same could be speculated about JS performance at Emscripten-generated code, and that works cross-browser. That's the cross-browser path of least resistance, compared to the practically unpassable Pepper barrier.

* Pepper is "inspired" by lots of APIs, but here the shallow shoe fits your new-HN-user drive-by. NPAPI is a sunk cost all browsers save modern IE have paid out for years. Pepper is new and much bigger. Have you even read all the interfaces?

The bottom line is that whatever PNaCl performance wins may lie in the future -- and I will believe them when Google does as shown by Chrome Web Store games being PNaCl'ed not NaCl'ed -- Pepper is the blocker for any cross-browser adoption in reality.

This ignores principled objections to more native code on the web, as a "social ill". Let's take that up separately, because it could override any technical argument. I'm happy to stop on the Pepper point for now, since Google manifestly is stuck there.
Do you advocate setting up something like google authenticator (RFC6238 I think?)if you run your own email server or does it make more sense to use client side SSL certificates for that?
While I was interning at Mozilla last summer, I developed this design and prototype for a new bookmarks manager: https://github.com/cleercode/mozaic Also worked a bit on Panorama.

Unfortunately, didn't really get any momentum (mainly because there's just a long pipeline of things that are higher priorities), but maybe it'll go somewhere in the future. I agree that it's a weak point.
We switched over from Beanstalk to Github a few months ago.

Beanstalk's web interface had fewer features and, more worryingly, it just failed to display changesets quite often (was also down for maintenance relatively frequently).
XENIX - Microsoft's Short-lived Love Affair with Unix
Either is fine; I'm personally even happier if you don't run your own mail server at all.
I'm still missing it... any help for us blind bats?
Thanks for these points. I've set the HTTP Strict Transport Security
header and session cookies are now HTTPS only, these are definitely
good very good ideas. While I do think that those services can
probably be trusted it's always good to reduce any dependencies on 3rd
parties so I'll definitely consider moving the stat logging server
side.

To answer your other questions:

* I used PyCrypto which certainly isn't as fool proof as I'd like but seems to be the best option available to me.

* Admins can decrypt the data by the nature of how the service works, Tarsnap requires you download and run an application yourself so is for very different types of users

* We use SSH certs and no admin is accessible to web users

* We do use Google Apps for email, and we do have two-factor set up

* tidy.io hasn't been up long enough to get vulnerability reports but if we do we will handle them responsibly and definitely give the finder thanks and credit. We do need a proper statement of this on the site though, I'll sort that out!
> But would you call it "an internal memory system"

Well, it's not being used later on to make decisions, is it?

I suppose I will go with that for my definition of memory: the agent makes a change to the state of the world (external) or to its own state (internal) and that change later affects its action.

Using that definition, my answer re the amoeba is yes.

I can see why it seems too broad. But I don't know a better definition. I suppose one could stipulate that consciousness is required. But I don't think that would be a standard position.
50 Years of LED Technology
Easy on the eyes and looks good.
I wouldn't call it artificially inflated, in that often times there are just no incentives (especially if ordering a car and not buying from existing stock).

There are two kinds of incentives: publicly advertised incentives (often called "cash back") and manufacturer-to-dealer incentives. The first kind is fairly common. For example, towards the end of a model year (or especially last year of a generation of a car), it's common for manufacturers to offer $1 or $1.5K cash back. The second, "advertised to dealer" kind is much more difficult to find out about. It might hinge on the # of cars the dealer sells that month. It might target a very specific model. Sometimes Edmunds has such incentives listed on a regional basis.

Many people don't bother checking even the manufacturer's own site for incentives. Right now, for example, Toyota has a $500 cash back on Corollas in my area. If I walk into a dealership and demand invoice, I am going to be actually paying $500 over invoice. Most salesmen will withhold available incentives and will happily nod and say "sure, here you go, invoice, you are robbing us blind here buddy."

About the only "inflation" is that the invoice price does include dealer holdback, which helps offset financing charges of holding a car on the lot in stock. A car that was held for a while will accumulate more financing charges (and thus less of the holdback will go into the dealer's pocket), whereas a car that is sold right away will let the dealer pocket the entire holdback. Typically we are talking anywhere from $200 to $800, depending on the car price and car manufacturer. This is an extra sensitive area and dealers are particularly unwilling to negotiate "into the holdback."
That last screenshot is really confusing, you might want to clean that concept up a bit.

Outside of that, here's my dilemma; even if I was crazy social, Facebook/FourSquare/Gowalla know where I am and offer me more incentives to post my locations and activities through them. What does this offer me? The problems you list that motivated you to create this app are easily solved by ignoring your phone or sending texts. If I'm busy, I'm too busy to update an app my friends probably won't even check. If I'm relaxing, I don't want people to know where I am and what I'm doing because I'm trying to relax. Ignoring them, which is the current method for handling these problems, is easier to do than what you are proposing.

I think you need to find a better reason for people to use something like this, which I think would be more relevant to families and possibly remote co-workers, and go from there.
Maps have a default iterator as shown in my slides. Sets too.

Best to take this to es-discuss. For now, we're sticking with Python, which did not give its top-class (non-dict) Object a default iterator.
Web Metrics: Comparison of 4.2 Billion Websites (Assets/Resources)
I skipped arrow function syntax (=> only in ES6). It was a bit much and I wanted to focus on APIs and compilation.
The title has much mystique. The article is about the porting of Dark Souls to PC.
Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data
I suggest opting out.
Well, the fact that Bitbucket didn't support Git until half a year ago, probably explains it.
Regardless of speed, I tend to use single quotes for keys and double quotes for text. E.g.

'key' => "Hello world"

Sometimes text needs escape characters such as \n or you want to include a variable. Double quotes just make that easier.
State of The Polar Bear
Nice. In the next step, could Stripe start cookie-ing people to remember their payment info across sites?
Is this one better than the extensions that already existed for taking screenshots?
Well it's not very good at not having classes either, due to the constructor mess (and `instanceof` being broken if you're doing constructorless JS as far as I know, which is very frustrating — of course it's even more broken if you have cross-frame objects involved) so...
Get rid of the stupid "certifications".
I really wish Google Code would support paid/private projects. Every startup I have been at would have been more productive with Google Code. Their bug tracker is better than both GitHub and BitBucket. We wouldn't have needed yet another set of accounts due to already being on Google. And critically they let you have multiple repositories for the same project. That is a huge annoyance with GitHub and BitBucket where you have exactly one repository (sometimes a second "wiki" one) and then one bug tracker, downloads etc. Every project I have worked on has multiple repositories (eg a server part, testing code, android client, admin tools, ios client). It has been of zero benefit having each one with its own bug tracker, downloads, wiki etc as often issues cross boundaries (eg bad display in client could be because of a bug in server returning bad data).

People have been begging Google to pay them! https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=1829
Would it not be simpler to say 'some things you do adds energy to you' and 'some things you do drains energy from you' avoid deficit energy days if possible.

I can spend a couple of hours programming and be hugely energized by it, and I can spend a couple of hours watching TV and be drained by it. The reverse is also true.

Be aware of your energy flow and balance it.
Much of the underlying technology involved is hidden from the public and the competition, but they could emulate and simulate to provide similar results if they so wished. In many cases they already do this, or come close to it.

In one example[0], an online retailer was taken to court by Amazon for using a one-click buy button. Having all of the customer's billing and shipping information on hand already, this feature is obvious and makes sense for any online retailer, but Amazon has patented it. The competing retailer's solution was to add a confirmation page, increasing it to two clicks but providing similar convenience.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Barnes_.26_Noble

Edit: Added a link to the referenced case
Hey it's awesome to see you guys tackling a larger project in Go. I've been writing some smaller services/tools with it in my day job, and I like it a lot.

Thanks for sharing your work.